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EU Parliament: Citizens' Rights Still Endangered By Mass Surveillance
New submitter hughankers writes with this slice of a press release from the European Parliament:: Too little has been done to safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance, say MEPs in a resolution voted on Thursday. They urge the EU Commission to ensure that all data transfers to the US are subject to an "effective level of protection" and ask EU member states to grant protection to Edward Snowden, as a "human rights defender". Parliament also raises concerns about surveillance laws in several EU countries.
This resolution, approved by 342 votes to 274, with 29 abstentions, takes stock of the (lack of) action taken by the European Commission, other EU institutions and member states on the recommendations set out by Parliament in its resolution of 12 March 2014 on the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens, drawn up in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations.
This resolution, approved by 342 votes to 274, with 29 abstentions, takes stock of the (lack of) action taken by the European Commission, other EU institutions and member states on the recommendations set out by Parliament in its resolution of 12 March 2014 on the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens, drawn up in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations.
Well, one would want a proper, justified warrant to search all this online data, anyway. It's a struggle to get even that.
Without it, imagine what a guy like Putin would do observing political enemies. It's bad enough where warrants even exist, there is no technological barrier, or even recording system, stop or even note the abuses.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's too easy to spy and collect/store information without anybody knowing. The only way to deal with it is to make sure what they have can't be used against you. Also, let's do more spying on them.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The U.S. is a big target because of high profile leaks exposing the programs, but it is pretty obvious given the level of cyber intelligence Intel shared between major world powers that every developed nation has similar programs.
The feigned outrage is especially hypocritical with the E.U. since the world leader in mass surveillance, the U.K., is a member. They not only have mass cyber surveillance, but their population willingly submits to mass video surveillance as well.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR), article 7 right to privacy, article 8, right to protection of personal data.
That's just some of the ways the EU has jurisdiction here. It also has 2002/58/EC, 2006/24/EC, 2009/136/EC, etc etc etc.
http://loc.gov/law/help/online_2012-007949_RPT_PART_ONE.pdf
The danger is the people who are supposed to enforce this are turncoats.
Why, for example, should my visit to that URL be logged for surveillance? What business is it of anyones that I researched that URL? I didn't consent to it, I use Duck Duck Go specifically to reject Google's surveillance for example. Yet turncoats in certain governments, like Theresa May, are putting in mass surveillance laws that would permit warrantless searches for that URL. Why?
No word on mass surveillance conducted by Europeans on Europeans? According to leaks, UK was even more egregious than US,
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/18/world/britains-gchq-the-brains-americas-nsa-the-money-behind-spy-alliance/
and the information sharing with US counterparts was done not only by Google and Facebook but also by German BND with NSA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/nsa-scandal-rekindles-in-germany-with-an-ironic-twist/2015/04/30/030ec9e0-ee7e-11e4-8050-839e9234b303_story.html
I assume these Eurocrats are done pushing for "mandatory data retention," the zombie law that keeps reviving itself in Europe which just passed in Australia? They were fine with the hypocricy of pushing for mandatory retention for government's benefit but right to be forgotten among fellow citizens: it's not ok for secrets to come back to haunt you, except when the secrets were never publicized in the first place and it's the government with its power imbalance thats haunting you and then it's fine. That was their old position. Now that they're worried about surveillance under US secret FISA courts approving front-door warrants to European's data, surely they'll be equally worried about spurious warrants within their own regime, right? Because if they are worried about the NSA's back door, that works slightly better if the data is in Europe. If foreigners moved all their damned poison data out of the US, the NSA would have no excuse to tap US infrastructure any more.
At least the last iron curtain was built by the will of an authoritarian regime. The next one will be built by smarmy political expedience and meshes of special interests.
The people that came from countries like Syria actually came to Europe to flee extremism (and war and no jobs and no safety, etc.).
New things are always on the horizon
I am wondering if this is a change of heart brought on by the recent emergency meeting held when mp found out they themselves were being spied on.
The problem is, if history is any indicator, then that chopping off some heads and getting rid of a government doesn't really solve much. All you get is another, at least as bad, asshole on top.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Weeeeeelll..... the failure there just MIGHT also have to do a teeny weeny little bit with us propping up dictators that hand us cheap oil in exchange for the tools to oppress their people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder to what degree the US does mass surveillance of people in Europe. That homeland security mentality may not be restrained by borders these days.
Nah. It's not about oil. Bush Sr. said so. I heard him, it was sometime after the "Read my lips, no new taxes!" pledge.
Warrants! How quaint. No one reads that old dusty Constitution nowadays anyway.
We're considering as a set of those "unalienable" rights. I guess the founders of the USA never really thought stuff like that would be necessary since they put those amendments 4 and 10 into the Constitution. I guess they didn't count on corrupt judges on the Supreme Court re-interpreting the Constitution to mean what they'd like it to mean. Kind of like the definition of is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Those in power who are working against the people (pretty much most of them now) need to be removed from office, charged for their crimes, and new representatives of the people be voted in
that's the point isn't it?
Without entirely new mechanisms for keeping wealth from owning the Corporate Money Machine, the new thieves just replace the old thieves.
I give you the Contract ON America for example
The Party of the 10% came to change the world, and stayed to keep the change.
In that case, Bill Clinton was right. The question was "Is there a relationship...", it should have been "is there now, or was there ever ...".
But a better example of the how the Supreme Court has modified the plain text of the constitution is how the interstate commerce clause is interpreted. The court is quite open about this: it claims that the Federal government can regulate anything that affects interstate commerce. But the word "affects" does not appear in the clause. An example of this: My pharmacist buys the drugs that he stocks from an out of state wholesaler. I then buy from him. Which is interstate commerce? According to the Supreme Court, both are. Or the idea that plants grown in my back yard that I might consume are interstate commerce. Again, the Supreme Court allows the Feds to regulate this because it "affects" interstate commerce. But that's not what the clause says.
The interesting thing is that it is generally the "originalists" who are the one who read the word "affects" into the Constitution, showing that these judges are highly influenced by their own biases, perhaps more so than the laws that they are supposed to interpret.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This seems to be a concerted propaganda campaign suggesting that things are getting better. They are not. They are getting worse and worse.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I modded 'Overrated' by accident, posting to make it go away...
His lips moved? So, in other words, he lied.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You prove again that utter stupidity is indistinguishable from advanced sarcasm.
Many countries require warrants and court approval for police investigations.
Most countries have national security and other exceptions for spying on their own citizens. European governments have been spying on their citizens under such exceptions since their founding, and they show no sign of changing those policies.
Actually most of the time when Bush Sr. spoke he never really said anything. He'd talk for hours and not one thing of any substance, The one time he got emphatic it was a fucking lie though. I got the feeling at the time he meant it but he just didn't have the balls to follow through.
Oh come on. Is means is. If the question was wrong that doesn't make any difference about the definition of is. Is has a very simple definition. I do agree with the rest of your comment though.
You have to be careful as words do change their meanings, sometimes drastically, in the course of a few centuries. In the case of "is", the meaning seems to have been stable for the last 4+ centuries. Other words not so much, take the etymology od "nice",
From http://www.etymonline.com/inde...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Is" means present tense. Now, currently. Bill Clinton was asked "Is there a relationship". He replied "no" and later, when accused of perjury on this point, by making the statement about the definition of "is", he was really pointing out either the deficiency of the question put to him, or the questioner's understanding of "is". The relationship was in the past, not current, so the correct answer to "is there a relationship" was "no".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is another non binding resolution. The EU parliament is a fake parliament, which cannot really force the commission into doing something (I understand it could revoke it, though, but I am not sure since it never hapened)
The EU court of justice did the hard work, though, when it stroke down the US-EU safe harbor agreement..